The Official Blog of the Independent Community of Educators, a caucus of the United Federation of Teachers

Friday, March 30, 2007

While Global Warming Is True, ICE is Not Melting

With about 700 ballots received yesterday and a number not yet counted the preliminary votes from the latest UFT election eliminated the opposition from any leadership or Executive Board position leaving the Union to be run by a cadre of yes-men and rubber stamps.

While Unity may claim that ICE has melted the sad fact is that we will all suffer from Global Warming as a significant number of our members will have no voice on the Executive Board and will undoubtedly be shut out of all decision making in developing union policy.

This election will be remembered not only for the end of the opposition at the Executive Board but by one of lowest turnout of ballots in recent memory.

High Schools

Our strength has been in the high schools and there were about 20,000 ballots sent out. Of these 4,228 were returned or a little more than 20%. That means that only 1 in 5 high school teachers returned a counted ballot. We received 1,524 votes or more than 36% of the ballots counted. Unity may claim victory but there are still a large number of high school teachers who want Randi and her crew out.

ICE-TJC: 1,524Unity: 2,183New Action: 521

Middle Schools/Junior High Schools

ICE received 444 votes or almost 20% of the votes counted. With 13,000 votes mailed only 2,216 were counted.

ICE/TJC: 444Unity: 1,499New Action: 273

Elementary

ICE received 1,337 votes or about 15% of the 8,151 votes counted.

ICE/TJC: 1337Unity: 6252New Action: 562

Functional

Out of the 42,000 ballots mailed 8044 were counted. ICE received 1032 votes or 13% of the ballots counted.

48 comments:

Anonymous
said...

spin, spin, spin ... you should just congratulate Randi... and pledge to support and participate in our UFT efforts to reduce class size, fight the Mayor, fight the Chancellor, and mobilize our membership.

In this case your wrong also, NYC Educator. The truth is now that the election period is over we should all be united in fighting our real enemies. Now is the time to change that "apathy" into mobilization and to put your money where your mouth is.

The mayor and the chancellor would not be able to do what they do if RAndi Weingarten and Unity had not supported and enabled mayoral control, and set Klein's vision in motion with the 05 contract.

Unity can ignore that, as well as its party's consistent failure to accomplish anything whatsoever in the field of class size--34 when I started, and 34 now. It's certainly understandable that patronage employees who've signed loyalty oaths ignore history.

However, if they really deplored apathy, they'd think twice before asking us to do the same.

To anon. 8:04With 90,000 leafets going out between ICE and TJC, mostly to the high schools (look at the paltry vote there), it is clear that they could have used sky writing, sound trucks, and electric shock therapy and wouldn't have made much of a dent. Votes came from schools where there was an active person present and even core people had to kill themselves getting people to vote. The UFT is irrelevant to most people (until they are in trouble.)

Look at all the money Unity spent and their vote totals went down by significant margins. Add that to the total control of the media.

Jeff you need to post the retiree vote numbers. Roughly half of Randi's votes came from retirees. In the preliminary count that was sent out, it's 18,864 raw retiree votes for Unity and only 16,398 active votes for Unity(that includes teachers and non teachers i.e. paras, counselors, secretaries, nurses, etc..).

Even after votes are weighted because retirees can only make up 18,000 total votes and they went way over that number, Unity still gets almost half of their votes from retirees.

Contratulations to all of the ICE-TJC members that ran for election. Even though Unity won, they were clearly challenged and also, ICE-TJC is more in the mix than ever before, which is good recognition. The majority of UFT members are not looking for change, they are looking for the continuation of their jobs, benefits and more money. As long as that is just challenged with rhetoric by BloomKlein, the rank and file will be slow to change course. But as we know, the rhetoric isn't empty and an assault on member's rights is well under way. When the splash of cold water finally hits the warm bath the the members loll around in, it will be easy to remind them that Randy gave 100% support to mayoral control and sold us down the river with a contact that destroyed seniority rights. When young teachers are denied tenure because of test scores, they will remember what Randy did for them as well. As the saying goes, one can loose the battle but still win the war. Congratulations again!!

You can put your heads in the sand all you want, but that ad in NYTeacher reached more voters than this blog or your leaflets.

I even sent out emails to friends telling them to vote the ICE ticket, and even my retired friends voted for ICE. However use the one vehicle you had going for you, and then put up the worst photos speaks volumes. The media is the message, and your message was worse than the pics on the FBI 10 Most Wanted List. I am more surprised the female candidates allowed that to happen.

You lost not only the election, but having another point of view on the Executive Board.

I never said put up a fortune, I only told you to invest in areas you needed to invest in. Even the webcasts which were my idea came across as tacky with candidates speaking off the cuff. That is the height of hubris! It should have been better produced than that.

There is an old saying: Buy cheap, get cheap. And the price of a good photo would not have put a whole in your pockets.

ICE members will continue to work for the education issues that are important to us such as protecting members' rights, reducing class size, getting rid of mayoral control. We will continue to participate in UFT activites like rallies, protests, and political actions. We will continue to volunteer to serve on UFT task forces. Hopefully, Unity will still select our members to be on those committees.

Kidding I'm not! Good leadership reevaluates what went wrong and what went right. You can put me down all you want rather than review, evaluate, alter and amend.

If Randi fights against mayoral control, protects senior teachers, makes sure GHI increases the amount of coverage before we pay an extra cent to them, and never gives away any other rights, then we are all winners.

"We will continue to volunteer to serve on UFT task forces. Hopefully, Unity will still select our members to be on those committees."

This may be a fellow ICE'er who posted this, though it is hard to believe becase of the begging tone. I say "UGH!" I've been against serving on these bullshit committees all along. People in ICE do what they want because we have no Unity-like rules but they are wasting their time. Let Unity call us whatever they want. I say boycott until and unless Unity is willing to support democratic reform in the union, which of course will be when we see icebergs in hell. This is what we should be telling the membership instead of crawling around these public relations committees.

ICE people would be better spending their time working on a sorely lacking newletter that can articulate ICE points of view on a consistent basis.

How can I represent ICE? I'm just a lowly retiree. ICE actually has working teachers deciding things, not like the UFT where retirees cast over half the votes in elections. Instead of wasting your time here why don't you start calling the 58,000 teachers who did NOT vote for Unity and ask them why.

Absolutely correct on this point. There's a lot to be critical. I do not agree that better pictures (that was the TJC part of the ad by the way, as ICE only used pictures of BloomWeinKlein and wanted them intentionally bad) would have made much difference in the final tally. Or better videos as the you tube counter never went above a few hundred (and they were probably the candidates themselves and their families.) Look at the impact of the Unity blitz -- Randi lost significant support all over with working teachers. Take a look at the 2004/07 comparison chart when it's posted.

There are a lot more things to criticize than the campiagn which is miniscule because of so few people. All campaigns take troops in the field. That is why your criticism on the media stuff is out of context given all the other realities, which you may or may not be aware of. The results show that putting a lot of resources into this campaign would have drained us and had little impact. TJC tried a direct mailing to every Bronx middle school teacher (3500) and we still got 444 MS votes CITYWIDE!

Where you can really help is with ideas on how to get people more organized so one day there can be a real media campaign and your ideas can be put into operation.

First I did not see any mailings from TJC and have no idea how the mailings were worded or how they looked. Both those are important.And why wasn't ICE involved with that process? You can't have a joint slate and not coordinate and consult.

Secondly, why blame TJC? ICE had to approve those pics on the ad, and if they weren't consulted, that's telling in itself.

Third, you are wrong about the money. If you are not going to invest in yourself because of the fear of losing, that's telling too!

Norm,

I would have gladly sent emails of the YouTube speeches if I myself was impressed with them. But I was disappointed after watching them because it seemed that people were just talking off the cuff rather than actually putting forth issues in a more professional manner. Also the background and lighting were not so good either. It came across as something put together the last minute. I heard you produced some of those. Well the price was right and they got what they paid for.

I wanted so badly to publicize those web-casts to the teachers in my school using our smart boards during lunch, and email other teachers I know, but I could not since I truly believed they were not good and did not speak to elementary issues. I was really hoping James would speak to the issues, but his video was very choppy and did not speak to elementary school issues.

Between the webcasts and the pics in NYTeacher, ICETJC lost 2 good opportunities that would have been worth the money to produce better.I am very surprised that you still would fight me on these points rather than look to the future to see what could be improved.

Pictures? Mailings? Videos? You can blame your crushing loss on all of the above if you wish, but the truth is that the rank and file do not not want our union taken over by a small group of disgruntled people without the expertise to run the day-to-day operation and who have no plan for the future. You should admit your defeat gracefully, and offer to work with Unity on the difficult issues that face all of us in the UFT.

It's true. You guys should be graceful, like the commenter who calls you a "small group of disgruntled people without the expertise to run the day-to-day operation and who have no plan for the future."

You certainly can't match Unity for experience.

ICE doesn't know how to establish permanent hall patrol.

They don't know how to negotiate punishment days in August. They've never figured out how to organize the end of guaranteed placement for teachers, and they've never presided over the end of the UFT transfer plan. They've never established 90 day suspensions based on unsubstantiated allegations.

Furthermore, they've never established or supported mayoral control. They've never legislated the end of high school teachers selecting their own VP.

They don't know how to prop up a phony, diversionary "opposition" party dedicated to fooling rank-and-file. Nor have they presided over 30 years of no progress whatsoever in reducing the class size of 34.

Also, they haven't dangled the promise of 25/55 in front of rank and file to get it to vote for contracts that were most de3finitely not in their interest.

Now Unity has done all those things and more (though oddly, I didn't see it mentioned in their campaign literature).

Perhaps that's why Unity, in an all out effort, was able to mobilize 20% of working teachers to vote.

I've no doubt its clever and imaginative "sit down and shut up" argument will draw many dissidents to share its point of view.

NYC edcuator you are a real bitter pill. Even Norm doesn't sound as bitter after the elction. The real issue is to turn this around and to be proactive. Yours and others lashing is what I beleive turned people off to you guys. The real issue is what are you doing to mobilize the membership? It can't just be "I hate Randi" or "I hate Unity" because now the election is over. What are you doing at your school to help get the members active?

Typical Unity obfuscation. Yes. Limit retiree votes, not eliminate them. Instead of a flat 18,000 pro-rated number, they should only allowed to be a % of the total so as to avoid the embarassment to Unity (see, I have your interests at heart) of having almost 22,000 of Unity's votes come from retirees.

While ICE/TJC results (22.6% of the in school vote) are nothing to brag about, the performance of Unity relative to last time is not pretty. Less than 10,000 out of a potential 70,000 teachers on elem, MS, and HS voted for Unity. Even with the New Action 1500 votes added to Weingarten's total, that comes to less than 12,000 votes for Randi from the teachers assigned to the schools. Even if paltry, at least ICE/TJC can claim a rise in the numbers all around.

As to what people are/will be doing to turn around the membership, ICE'TJC has a job to do. So does Unity. With the total control of the media and ability to reach every teacher through the mailboxes, and with the money Unity spent, the results look even more pathetic for Unity than for us.

At least we replaced New Action as the brand name for the opposition. Their strategy of sucking up to Randi gave them 8 seats on the Exec. Bd but to the people in the schools (some of the 1500 - 9% of the school vote- who voted for New Action may not have even noticed their sell-out but we will be sure to let them know by next time) they are history. They couldn't even show Randi they were needed to win the high schools, as Unity got 51% on their own.

Typical Unity obfuscation. Yes. Limit retiree votes, not eliminate them. Instead of a flat 18,000 pro-rated number, they should only allowed to be a % of the total so as to avoid the embarassment to Unity (see, I have your interests at heart) of having almost 22,000 of Unity's votes come from retirees.

While ICE/TJC results (22.6% of the in school vote) are nothing to brag about, the performance of Unity relative to last time is not pretty. Less than 10,000 out of a potential 70,000 teachers on elem, MS, and HS voted for Unity. Even with the New Action 1500 votes added to Weingarten's total, that comes to less than 12,000 votes for Randi from the teachers assigned to the schools. Even if paltry, at least ICE/TJC can claim a rise in the numbers all around.

As to what people are/will be doing to turn around the membership, ICE'TJC has a job to do. So does Unity. With the total control of the media and ability to reach every teacher through the mailboxes, and with the money Unity spent, the results look even more pathetic for Unity than for us.

At least we replaced New Action as the brand name for the opposition. Their strategy of sucking up to Randi gave them 8 seats on the Exec. Bd but to the people in the schools (some of the 1500 - 9% of the school vote- who voted for New Action may not have even noticed their sell-out but we will be sure to let them know by next time) they are history. They couldn't even show Randi they were needed to win the high schools, as Unity got 51% on their own.

the election is over. so what? unity sold us out before, and they'd do it again in a new york minute. the only battle they care about is the battle to take more of our money. when you patrol the lunchrooms you can have our support. thanks for tyhat

I agree with the last Unity slug. Don't blame the new teachers or the Fellows. Only 16,000 out of 70,000 voted.

But what a joke to say "Help the union fight the bigger battles!" when Unity has surrendered - Petainists. Remember the "climate of the times" argument to justify the '05 givebacks? Remember how Giuliani was the worst ever? Give us a break. Remember the double zero 5 year contract? Remember the loss of the Labor Day weekend as part of the summer vacation?

You wouldn't know how to fight a battle if it came up and smacked you in the face. Oh! I forgot. BloomKlein have already done that.

I am a "middle-of-the-road" teacher with 19 years on the job. I voted for TJC/ICE, as did my wife, who is also a teacher. I agree with the poster who polled his/her membership. Since half of our teachers have under 5 years experience, and the fellows program is blatantly anti-union, it goes to show that they are a large part of the problem.

Hey! A comment by someone anon. does not mean it is ICE talking. We do NOT take the position Teaching Fellows are anti-union though supposedly there is an attempt to indoctrinate them by the DOE. Some retired ICE people have been mentoring Fellows for years and they have been fine. Those who stay past 5 years will be as likely as anyone in the past to support the union.

In my school there is a clique of fellows who firmly believe that anyone over 35 is just counting their days until retirement. They are anti-union. They are all for extended days and years. The other fellows were screwed by our principal and have come to realize the importance of the union. However, one from the clique has been elected as our school's chapter leader. She refuses to file grievances. One teacher got hit by a student. She never submitted the incident report. When our delegate goes to the DA to fight for our rights, she is hanging out with the principal. Her head so too far up our leadership academy principal's a$$ that she cannot be trusted. We convinced our delegate to report EVERYTHING to our DR. Hopefully she will take over the chapter.

No CL can refuse to file grievances. It is up to the teacher but most of them are afraid too.

You want to know how many chapter leaders have their heads up the principal's ass? Almost every CL, many of them Unity in my district. In my district the UFT Dist Rep did the bidding of the Supt.

And that was way before the TF program was conceived. We shouldn't generalize based on one school. Many CL end up in this situation because they get no protection from the union when a vicious principal goes after them. It takes a lot to stand up to this pressure. All attempts to get the UFT to pass a reso calling for special protection for CL who are under attack were turned down by Unity.

Many CL use the position as a stepping stone to admin. Almost every principal in my district before BloomKlein came from CL ranks. The way to fight against this is to organize in the school.

Hey, Norm, which district is yours? Which DR are you accusing of being in cahoots with the Supt. to the detriment of the membership? Instead of making vague innuendos about people, the veracity of which can't be ascertained, why not come out and tell us what you claim to know? Or is this just the bitterness of defeat talking?

As usual, Unity a-hole who knows full well where I am talking about when I taught way back when.

Everyone in the UFT remembers what went on in my district where the Dist Rep became the Superintendent (one of your former colleagues by the way who I ended up having some respect for just because he spit in your faces.) You know full well how many grievances were filed in the entire district over a 30 year period.

And notice how you ignore the point that you voted against stronger protections for CL when Tom Pappas told you to, so if CL are in the pockets of administrators look in the mirror.

I have no idea what EdNotes is talking about...does anyone else? A DR became a Supt.? Where? When? You really ARE very stupid. Here I am asking a question because of something you said and you answer by calling me a Unity ass**** and then making further allusions to things I never even heard of that apparently took place 30 years. Well, maybe you think every member of the UFT knows what you're referring to, but I doubt it and you're not going to win any friends or votes by alienating visitors to your website when you're rude. I don't know what district you're citing or what DR you mean. I have no idea what Tom Pappas told anyone to do. (Isn't he retired anyway?) And I certainly don't know anything about grievances in some unnamed district. But nevermind, just keep talking to yourself about stuff no one understands if it makes you feel better. And this is the inclusive ICE/TJC party that wants our vote? You're wasting your money on campaign literature and flyers if this is how you treat your colleagues who ask questions.

Very dramatic fall off in support for Unity particularly in their strongest divisions, Elementary and Retirees.

Unfortunately this didn't translate into a dramatic shift of support to the opposition from those previously active Unity supporters, nor does the opposition appear to be drawing in those inactive members in significant numbers.

How does disatisfaction, criticism of the staus quo become a movement for "something better"? How do all the 'negatives' become positives? I disagree with the notion that further worsening conditions will propel teachers into the arms of the opposition in sufficient numbers to oust Unity.

What does that "something better" l like?

How do we connect our daily work in our schools and classrooms to this end? How do we free our thinking and our practice to be more inclusive? How do we treat one another, how do we conduct our deliberations as we move towards "something better"?

So far I have learned from my parent union (aft) thatreal wages have not gone up more than 2 percent since1994.

Funny that the pre-contract vote and pre-electionUnity propaganda disputes that figure and said we gothuge raises, even funnier is that the AFT report cameout after the election...

An election in which only 29 percent of us bothered tovote. 126,640 members did not even vote!

Albany says class sizes will be reduced in five years,the city says there are no specific targets in numberof students per class or money spent. More importantlythe city cannot be sued over class size.

Our newly reelected leader (and lawyer) says on classsize reform, “the language is clear it’s notambiguous, class size has to be the foundation forreform.” I guess she is right, the language is clear,it’s just meaningless.

No goals, no repercussions, maybe we should all usethat rubric for success in our classrooms. After all,it is good enough for The mayor, the chancellor, andour leader.

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UFT Reports Filed With Labor Deparment

Each year our union is required, by law, to file several financial reports. The form, called an LM-2, is available here. This report reflect transactions for the year ending July 31, 2014. It was prepared on December 23, 2014.

Additionally the Department of Labor provides other reports about the UFT. Go to their site and input file number 063-924 at the top and select the type of report you want to review. These files are in spreadsheet format.